Destroy all movies!!!

The most dazzlingly insane film reference book of all time, Destroy All Movies!!! is an informative, hilarious, and impossibly complete guide to every goddamn appearance of a punk (or new waver!) to hit the screen in the 20th Century. This wildly comprehensive eyeball-slammer features A-to-Z coverage of over 1100 feature films from around the world, as well as dozens of exclusive interviews with the creators and cast of essential titles such as Repo Man, Return of the Living Dead, The Decline of Western Civilization and Valley Girl. Everyone from Richard Hell to Penelope Spheeris to Ian MacKaye contributes his or her uncensored reminiscences from the front lines of a revolution. Other interviewees include Alex Cox, Nick Zedd, Lech Kowalski, Mary Woronov and Circle Jerks frontman Keith Morris. Also examined are hundreds of prime examples of straight-to-VHS slasher trash, Brooklyn junkie masterpieces, Filipino breakdancing fairytales, no-budget post-apocalyptic epics, and movies that shouldn’t even have been released, many of which have never been written about online or in print!

In the late ’70s, Punk Rock and its followers ambushed the world with nuclear force. It was an unprecedented phenomenon that infested radios, print, and culture as a whole. Of all its shell-shocked witnesses, the least prepared was Hollywood, who viewed the movement as a walking epidemic of self-abusive, garbage-eating, candy-colored manimals ripe for marketable stereotyping. The results were hilarious, as lowbrow cinema was forever altered in the shadows of 20-inch mohawks and steel-spiked wardrobes. Meanwhile, punk participants like Spheeris and Alex Cox managed to document the emerging outbreak in a more humanistic light, creating enduring visions of a new breed of youth through blazing music documentaries and innovative narrative assaults.

Destroy All Movies!!! nails down both ends of the spectrum with superhuman research, vicious precision, and electrically charged stills and images, and is the first and final definitive armchair roadmap to punk and new wave on celluloid. Five years in the making, this pulse-bursting monument to lowbrow cultural obsession is a must for all film fanatics, music maniacs, anti-fashion mutants, ’80s nostalgists, sleazoids, cop-killers, and spazzmatics!

‎"No longer relegated to hazy memories of late-night cable television watching, Destroy All Movies!!! makes lost punks-on-film classics feel not only alive but necessary. I predict that Destroy All Movies!!! will soon be on the bookshelf of every self-respecting musician, music fan and movie buff. At long last there is a punk rock movie bible!" – Carrie Brownstein (NPR; Sleater-Kinney)

"Punk rock looked scary. Teens turned sullen, black-eyed, aliens. Perfect fodder for Hollywood, as Hollywood thrives on promises and threats of violence. But the teens weren’t really very scary — they were smart and sensitive and funny. Hollywood was the really scary one. Especially in its consistent ability to get IT wrong. There are faux punks galore in the movies and more sincere poseurs standing next to them hired right off the street. Can you tell which is which? This is a program and tour-guide." – Gary Panter

"Zack! Bryan! Listen up! This book is impossible. You didn’t actually compile this book. You would have to be insane pop-culture mutants with no reasonable chance of integrating into legitimate society in order to get this much stunningly retrograde crapola between two covers. I'm in awe. I thank you, and the rotting corpse of Sid Vicious thanks you." – Joe Bob Briggs

"Your book is megawesomesupercoolkickassfuckyeah-rad. And you can quote me on that." – Mark Savlov (Austin Chronicle)

"If you're into anarchic cinema and its offshoots, this is a great reference — and a fun browse." – Leonard Maltin

"Few movies from the last 25 years of the 20th century to feature or include punk in any way, shape, or form could have escaped inclusion in this 500-plus -page coffee-table-sized survey. More than 1,100 such films are reviewed in passionate detail..." – Richie Unterberger, Mojo

"The sheer number of films reviewed is a heady achievement... Nobody will sit down and read this book cover to cover, but it's seemingly endless entertainment skipping through. [...] This one is essential reading for any fan of punk and film." – Juxtapoz

"I never leave home without this book." – Jason Eisener (director of Hobo with a Shotgun)